The Bride of Texas, page 21
The glasses sparkled in the light of the candles. It was a balmy night; the stars overhead were reflected in Ambrose’s polished boots. Humphrey raised his glass to the moon. Nothing seemed to me lovelier than a glass of cognac shimmering with little blue and amber flames. It was so peaceful.
“Here in the Middle West,” Humphrey continued, “many people have been affected by the collapse of river commerce. The Union gunboat patrols the river to prevent it from serving the rebels and their northern suppliers, but to many it represents violence, usurpation, freedom denied, misery, and bankruptcy. It’s difficult to explain why they should face ruin here for the victory of the Union, when Yankee manufacturers in the East are lining their pockets. Now Lincoln has tossed the Emancipation Proclamation into the pot. Workers fear a rapid drop in wages if the Middle West is flooded with Negroes who have no idea what wages are, and who are prepared to work for a mere caricature of a decent day’s pay.”
“There’s a war on!” said Ambrose, frowning, swirling the sparkling liquid around in his glass. “The troops are sacrificing far more. When the war is over, everything will return to normal, including river traffic on the Mississippi.”
“Yes,” my husband said, “but if too many freed slaves move north, it’s going to cause problems. The main problem, for now at least, is that those who want peace with the South are only fanning the flames of these fears. You’ve read those newspaper articles, haven’t you, general?”
Ambrose nodded gravely.
“At the Democratic Convention where Vallandigham tried unsuccessfully to win the nomination,” said my husband, “an old anti-Lincoln slogan turned up: ‘The Constitution as it is, the Union as it was.’ Vallandigham’s supporters added, ‘And the Niggers where they are!’ There can be no misconstruing that.” Humphrey gave a dry chuckle and took a sip from his glass. “There are paradoxes everywhere. Here, workers are afraid of competition from the Negro. Many entrepreneurs in the East fear it too, for some factories in the South are beginning to use slave labour and that could bring down international prices. That’s why they’re for emancipation in the East, and against it in the Middle West.” He paused and sighed. “No one really cares what happens to the Negroes, neither the factory owners in the East nor the peace-makers in the Middle West. Hatred for the Negro race is actually artificial. Or rather, it’s secondary.”
I rose and walked over to the newspaper stand by the balcony door, and took out a copy of the Indianapolis Daily Sentinel. I had marked some articles in red pencil. My two men watched me in silence as I read aloud: “ ‘Congress has the negro-phobia. It is nigger in the Senate, and nigger in the House. It is nigger in the forenoon and nigger in the afternoon. It is nigger in motions and nigger in speeches. It was nigger the first day and it has been nigger every day. Nigger is in every man’s eye, and nigger in every man’s mouth. It’s nigger in the lobby and nigger in the hall.… The nigger vapor is a moral pestilence that blunts the sense of duty to the Constitution and destroys the instinct of obedience to the law.’ ” I put down the newspaper. “Thus saith Vallandigham. Does that sound like secondary hatred to you? Or even artificial? Vallandigham voted against emancipation in Congress. That might be explained by your hypothesis, Humphrey, but he also voted against recognizing the Negro Republic of Haiti —”
“That was Lincoln’s proposal,” my husband interrupted. “And the abolitionists were pushing for it.”
“But, my darling,” I asked, “what does that tell you?”
My husband paused to think, then smiled. “You’re probably right. His distaste may well have deeper roots. Because” — he paused again — “if you look at his voting record, he was in favour of eliminating the inhumane treatment of sailors, for granting Jews full rights of American citizenship, and as a matter of fact he even voted to allow the Mormons in Utah to practise polygamy. You might even say” — he made a wry face — “that Vallandigham is a champion of the underprivileged as long as their skin isn’t black. Although, in a sense, he ought to be grateful to the Negroes.”
“Why?” asked Ambrose.
“He ran for Congress three times unsuccessfully,” said my husband. “He was defeated a fourth time too, by Lewis Campbell. But Vallandigham found out that, all over Ohio, many of those who voted for Campbell were Negroes, even though the local regulations prohibited it. He challenged the results and after a recount he came off about two votes ahead of Campbell. He hadn’t won the confidence of the voters, but the law was on his side.”
I thought for a moment. “Humphrey,” I said, “you’re the philosophy professor. What’s the name of that Greek play where the sister wants to bury her murdered brother and —”
“What play?” said Ambrose.
7
When we were saying our farewells that evening under the lantern at the doorway, and Ambrose stood there in his glittering uniform, he seemed to have made up his mind about something. He swung onto his horse and galloped off into the shimmering darkness. Such a lovely uniform. Soldiers deserve it. Their lot in war is terrible.
Humphrey went to bed and was soon sound asleep, while I sat in the parlour, thoughts chasing around in my brain like naughty children.
Was I being unfair to Vallandigham? One thing you couldn’t deny: he had opposed this war for a long time, and what had it brought him? He had once tried to explain his position in an army camp in Washington, and a sergeant had slapped his face and he had almost been lynched. A grocer in Dayton where he’d shopped for years refused to serve him, saying he wouldn’t take money from traitors. When Clem tried to talk the matter over with him, the grocer pulled a pistol on him; Vallandigham stepped back, tripped on the doorstep, fell to his hands and knees, and crawled along the sidewalk into the next shop. Unfortunately it was a fashionable milliner’s, and the sight of the congressman entering the establishment on all fours was far too delightful for the ladies to keep to themselves.
To that point, of course, the war had been one calamity after another: Bull Run, Antietam, Chickamauga, Fredericksburg, with no more than fleeting glimpses of victory. Many in the North were growing weary of the war, and the Copperheads — the fanatics and the Democrats advocating peace with the South — were gaining in strength. Unless the North started winning, the Democratic candidate stood to beat Lincoln in next year’s presidential election. Was this what Vallandigham was betting on? Whatever it was, so far things were going his way.
One time at Eunice Jarrett’s, where Vallandigham was invited as the guest of honour, he explained his theory of the war to us. Negro slavery isn’t the issue at all, he said. It’s over things like import tariffs, which the North insists on and the South rejects, because the North opposes importing cheap industrial goods from Europe, while the South welcomes it. It’s over the transcontinental railroad, which the North wants to run from Chicago to San Francisco while the South wants to go across Texas to New Mexico. To enforce their will, the Northern capitalists need to whip up a war fever — but who would go to war for an import tariff or a railroad route? That’s where abolitionism suits their purpose. Slavery can’t be considered with a cool head, and abolitionism adds the element of righteous indignation that clouds the mind. But with the North less than successful in the war so far, hot heads have begun to cool. The soldiers have come into contact with Negroes and had their eyes opened. They see the horrors of the bloody casualties.…
“Does this mean you are not opposed to slavery, Mr. Vallandigham?” asked Eunice, and her voice trembled. She had recently been host to Harriet Beecher Stowe, and was considering inviting the other Harriet, Harriet Tubman, to her salon.
“Of course I am,” replied Clem, “but I have also always been opposed to unleashing this terrible war for the sake of abolitionist fantasies.”
“And yet —” said Eunice, but Vallandigham wasn’t finished.
“Any dispute can be resolved through discussion,” he declared with deep conviction. “Even slavery.”
“But —” Eunice tried again, but Vallandigham talked on and on, while the ladies in Eunice’s parlour stared at him as if they’d been bitten by a snake.
I thought of the snake with the lovely coppery head, called by the same name as the copper coin worn in the lapels of those who strove for peace with the South. Unlike the bombastic rattler, which gives a noisy warning before it strikes, this attractive reptile gives no warning at all.
The Bavarian pendulum clock struck midnight. I sighed. I had resolved nothing; I just wanted to be fair.
And Ambrose had come to a decision of some sort. He was going to do something foolish.
Jasmine tiptoed into the room. I wondered what she was doing up so late. I had sent her to bed hours before.
She hesitated, her hands folded at her waist.
“Is something the matter, Jasmine?”
“I can’t sleep,” she said, “I keep —”
“What is it, child?”
The fear in her eyes was obvious. “Miz Tracy — do you think —”
“Think what?”
“Think they’ll make peace with the Rebels?”
“Oh dear, whatever gave you that silly idea?” I said, putting an arm around her. “Of course they won’t make peace. We would have to surrender for that to happen, and you saw General Burnside tonight, didn’t you? Men like that don’t surrender, Jasmine.”
8
I would go to the library at my husband’s college and read the newspapers. They had a good selection of Democratic and Republican papers, from Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, and the major dailies from New York and Boston — entertaining reading if you weren’t too concerned whether the outcome of the war would suit Jasmine and her lazy footman.
The newspapers siding with the anti-war Democrats called for peace, which they would qualify as “honourable” and “mutually acceptable” and “sensible” and so on. But they also ran articles that demanded peace “at any price”. I imagined Ambrose diligently trying to work out what that price would be, furrowing his brow as he read lines directed at Lincoln’s government: “Fight your own battles. The Democratic press of this country refuses to support the interests of the abolitionist traitors any longer. This paper will do everything in its power to stop the wave of desolation that threatens to sweep the land!” In his Washington office Halleck may have thought these were just words — strong words, but no more than words. But people here were mesmerized by them.
I was visiting my sick aunt in Dayton when Vallandigham arrived, fresh from Congress.
“You say they gave him ovations?” Ambrose asked bitterly. We had run into each other while I was out for a stroll along the river.
“It was a hero’s triumphal return to his home town,” I said. “No one has ever been welcomed in Ohio like that before. They fired a cannon in front of the hotel in his honour. I counted the number of salutes for a while, then gave up. They couldn’t stop.”
“I hear the Copperheads had an allegorical float,” he said with evident distaste.
“They did indeed.”
“There was apparently a white man in chains and a Negro standing over him with a bullwhip.”
“It was nothing very original. It was supposed to illustrate Vallandigham’s slogan about the war being waged to free the slave and enslave the white man. But it had very little impact,” I said. “There was a banner over the wagon that said EMANCIPATION IN THE SOUTH — STARVATION IN THE NORTH. The Negro was real, but he was so terrified that the white man in chains had to kick him to make him raise the whip and crack it feebly, and it obviously never connected, and many people must have thought, as did I, that plantation overseers would hardly be that ineffectual.”
“How could he have allowed himself to be used like that?” Ambrose said, shaking his head.
“An editor of the Dayton Journal who was at my aunt’s house said they held the Negro’s wife hostage at The Empire until the parade was over. I heard that he’d already had some trouble with the Copperheads on a farm near Dayton —”
We stopped by an iron railing where there was a nice view of Cincinnati. The April wind played with the tassel on Ambrose’s sword. I had heard the story of the allegorical Negro’s troubles from Jasmine. He had run away from a Georgia plantation with his wife, with the help of the abolitionists and their Underground Railroad, along the same route Jasmine’s footman would have taken if things had gone according to plan. The abolitionists arranged for the man to work for a farmer named Palme, an abolitionist himself and an exception in Ohio. Word of the black farmhand spread through the district like wildfire, and a few days after he got his first pay, a mob gathered in Palme’s field — some were white workers, most were just white brawlers — and Palme’s assurance that he was paying the black man the same wages he paid his white hands just added fuel to the fire. The workers who had come to protest low wages for the former slave, which could bring down their own wages, thought equal pay was an insult to the white race. It was an interesting clash of two unacceptable opposites, but it didn’t lead to deeper thinking. On the contrary, the labourers drove the Negro off the farm, and the brawlers tried to pick a fight with the farmer, but he brought out a shotgun. The Negro and his wife went on to make their living in Dayton, doing odd jobs provided to them by militant local Republicans. Now and then the couple also hewed wood for militant Democrats, which was supposed to remind the population of Joshua, chapter nine. Finally they made the Negro play another symbolic part, for the greater glory of Clem Vallandigham, and they even paid him to do it. Of course, they paid him less than the piece of white trash they hired to symbolize the enslavement of the white race.
“They had someone on the float representing Lincoln,” said Ambrose. “I heard it was downright insulting.”
“It made even less impact than the Negro with the whip. Lincoln stood behind him, appearing to approve of how the former slave was whipping the white tramp. But the one playing Lincoln was the shortest of the three on the float. Maybe they don’t have enough tall men in Dayton. They put an extra high top hat on his head, but it collapsed and, all told, it was —”
“I heard they also slandered the president,” Ambrose interrupted. “Speaker after speaker. They called him ‘usurper’, ‘tyrant’, ‘demagogue’, ‘fool’ —”
“The one I liked best was ‘the ugliest head of state in the world’. That may well be the truth.”
Ambrose spun round to face me. “Lorraine,” he said intensely, and then he quoted an article he had memorized. His voice was bitter: “ ‘The miserable imbecile that now disgraces the President’s chair … raw boned, shamble-gaited, bow-legged, knock-kneed … one who has no intellect and less moral nature …’ ” His pink face turned red with rage. “That’s what some of them are saying about Lincoln! The man who bears all this superhuman responsibility on his shoulders! The commander of our brave army, bleeding and dying on the battlefronts!”
He spoke in the clichés of a general, but what is a cliché? Perhaps it’s a truth so truthful it has become self-evident. Of course, to those who never knew blood-soaked hillsides like the one at Marye’s Heights, such truths may mean nothing.
“At the very least, it was in poor taste.” I said.
9
Once when he was having tea at our house Ambrose showed me a pair of shiny cuff-links. One of them depicted the head of the goddess Liberty on an old copper coin, the other a little snake (it looked more like a worm) with a triangular head, which everyone knows conceals poisonous fangs. I thought of the evening at Eunice Jarrett’s. The symbol had inspired some enterprising soul, because Ambrose handed me an advertisement for the strange cuff-links clipped from the Indianapolis Daily Sentinel: “Let every white man accept “the insult” and wear the grand old emblem of Liberty — the Copperhead!”
“Since when is a poisonous snake a symbol of liberty?” I asked. “Our American bald eagle eats those creatures for dinner.”
There were rings of fatigue under Ambrose’s eyes, but he laughed aloud. “You should have been a journalist, Lorraine! That would never have occurred to me. Too bad you aren’t a man!”
“Really?”
“Well, you know what I mean,” he said, his face turning a pleasing red.
“I probably do, even though I’m just a woman,” I said. “And you’re welcome to use that line. Maybe you can inscribe it in some lady’s autograph book, or include it in one of your orders —”
He nodded. I knew the military situation was on his mind. He had just returned from Kentucky two days ago; he’d gone on the urgent request of General Rosecrans, who was currently in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. He had needed Ambrose’s units in position along the Cumberland River, down in the south of Kentucky. I learned this from the papers. I only prayed that the Northern papers were delayed in getting to the South.
“I just issued an order,” said Ambrose morosely. “Order Number Thirty-eight. It’s a pity I didn’t come to see you first.”
I had already heard about that order. It had been provoked by a firebrand speech delivered in Hamilton by Vallandigham, who had run for governor and was therefore trying to get himself arrested. As a martyr, he could scarcely fail to win the nomination. My husband commented on Burnside’s order with the word “Ouch!” and then read the order aloud: “All persons found within our lines who commit acts for the benefit of the enemies of our country will be tried as spies or traitors and, if convicted, will suffer death.’ ”
“Somewhat bloodthirsty,” I said, “but of course treason is —”
My husband went right on reading: “… Likewise, anyone declaring sympathy for the enemy will be subject to arrest and trial, with conviction carrying the death penalty or expulsion beyond federal lines ‘into the lines of their friends’.”
10
The evening of May 4, as I was walking past the central telegraph office in Cincinnati, I saw Ambrose’s chestnut mare tied to the railing outside, its shiny coat as brown as the general’s whiskers. I walked up to the door; WESTERN UNION was stencilled on its glass pane. Inside, Ambrose and his aide were leaning over the telegrapher’s desk. I thought I might be able to have a few words with him, but just then they finished what they were doing and hurried towards the door. Ambrose rushed past without noticing me. They jumped on their horses and galloped off.
